Tag: Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys – Winner

Tim: You may have heard that Muse are doing the official Olympic song. If you have, and you’ve heard it, you will have come to the conclusion that it’s a total bloody racket.

Tom: See, I thought that the first time I heard it, but then on further listens it’s got a lot better. I mean, it’s Muse: if they can get away with Knights of Cydonia they can get away with this. Admittedly Matt Bellamy does sound more like the guy from Electric Six at times, and the lyrics are trite, but still.

Tim: Still, it’s a total bloody racket. This, on the other hand, would have been a lovely Olympics song, and not just because it has a podium on the cover of it.

Tom: There’s something about the word “win” and “winner”: use them in a song and it just seems patronising and a little awkward, like giving a “you tried” medal to every kid on school sports day.

Tim: Sometimes, perhaps, but here I just can’t agree with you. This is the first song in almost a year where I’ve bought a song and then listened to it over and over and over again on repeat, because it’s brilliant.

Tom: It keeps reminding me of Take That’s “Shine”, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. They’re just similar, happy songs, I guess.

Tim: Partly it’s the understatedness of it all – at the end of the song (with that delightful key change) it cranks it up a lot, but until then it could, technically, be described as a bit plodding, but here that is in no way a criticism, because what it does is focus the listener’s attention on the lyrics. It’s the same with the video – you don’t get dazzled by the bright colours or pretty fonts they’re using, because it’s just the words, and those words are wonderful.

Anyone who doesn’t get goosebumps from that chorus is clearly an emotional void.

Tom: Hello.

Tim: Yep, figures. But in fact anyone who doesn’t find this song at least very good is just plain wrong.

Tom: Yes, but that’s only due to that middle eight and last chorus. Those are so good that they raise the whole song’s average.

Tim: And push it from cloud-high levels to outer-atmosphere levels of excellency.

Pet Shop Boys – Together

The new one isn’t a classic.

Tom: I listened to this – and then immediately went and listened to ‘Go West’, which is actually good.

The Pet Shop Boys have the same approach as Pink – put loads and loads of stuff out, eventually you’ll have enough classics to do a medley at the Brits. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a good approach, but it does mean it’s a bit disappointing when the new one isn’t a classic.

Tim: True. However, I think one problem here is the whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing, because I’ve just listened to the rest of their previous greatest hits album from 2003 – Since when they’ve apparently released two new albums and five singles. Nope, me neither.

Tom: I remember one album and one single. To be fair, Love Etc was a very good single.

Tim: Maybe, but the fact remains that the vast majority of their songs are nowhere near as good as Go West, and this song is in fact a lot better than most of them. Of course it’s not as good as Go West – the chances of that would be near zero. It is, on the other hand, still a good song and deserves to be judged on its own merits.

So, its merits. The song as a whole has a lot of energy and vibrancy to it – it’s somehow managed to stay in the style of music they’ve always been known for, yet not seem dated at all.

Tom: I’ll grant it that. It’s their style, and it doesn’t seem dated. But it also doesn’t seem to be much good: it just plods along.

Tim: There are elements of The Journey Continues to it, which was a pleasant enough tune, but one thing I’m not particularly keen on is the way it temporarily ends after the first verse.

Tom: I’m not keen on that either. The ‘temporary’ part, I mean.

Tim: Overall, however, I think it rates as perhaps not excellent, but certainly jolly good, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it ended up on a few people’s ‘Top however many Most Played’ playlists.

Tom: Somewhere near Pink’s latest track.